


Bloodflood

by Nighthaunting



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Bloodlust, Frottage, Gen, I am a bad person, I'm Sorry, M/M, Masturbation in Shower, and liking it, gabe is smitten, gabe is so thirsty, is eating souls cannibalism?, jack 'n' gabe have issues and also sex, jack is on a wild ride of vampirism and murder, jack's on a roaring rampage of revenge, vampire 76 au, yes i am vampire au anon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-17 23:09:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7289767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jack stumbled away from the Swiss base, he hadn't understood why he was alive. For varying definitions of alive.</p><p>Now with even more blood!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bloodflood

**Author's Note:**

> "A flood of blood to the heart through the fear slipstreams."

Jack lives and breathes, to an extent. If he was dead he thinks he'd have stayed down instead of stumbling from the Swiss base--climbing up out of the burned-out wreckage of whatever lab he'd fallen into, blacking out and waking again against all odds--and you have to breathe to be able to talk. To be able to scream.

He's cold, and his pulse, when he takes it, is so slow he nearly misses it. He's wandering, sticking to the shadows and staying out of the spotlight. The daylight. So much so that when he finally tries to step out into the sun and his eyes burn and blur and he hunches over to claw at his watering eyes--throwing himself back inside to stop it, and the prickling heat that crawls along his skin--he thinks at first that it's just his adjustment to running at night. When it happens again, the second time, he grows suspicious.

At first, when he was still in shock that his life and Overwatch and Gabe had blown up in his face, he hadn't questioned surviving. But he thinks back to when he woke up in some sub basement lab--his wounds already healed to scars, his lungs clear of smoke--the floor under him sticky with blood that could have been his, or could have been in any of the multitudes of broken phials and test tubes shattered and sparkling in the burning remains of the base. Later, when he sheds off his smoke-and-blood stained fatigues his hands start to shake as he sees the scars in the mirror of the dingy bathroom he's ducked into. His hair is white, and he could have sworn his fight with Gabriel had knocked teeth from his mouth even when he can see them all gleaming straight and perfect and  _ so sharp and white _ under the fluorescent light. If there is something about the way his eyes catch the light that's different than before, Jack can't bring himself to think about it in the face of the overwhelming  _ hunger _ that strikes him whenever he's around other people.

Daylight is an inconvenience, but he rationalizes it away by reminding himself that he's in hiding. Food is bland and he can't stomach very much of it, and he still feels  _ so hungry _ , but giving credence to the way he can sense the warmth and pulse of the people around him would turn the suspected truth of his survival into a reality. Jack can't face it, not yet.

Jack finally breaks, and when he does it's messy. He's fighting straggling Talon agents traced to one of their smaller outposts. There's nothing particularly valuable to be gained here other than information to point him towards a more important base. It's unlucky all around when one of the Talon agents manages to hit him; a spray of bullets tearing through his jacket and kevlar vest to shred his shoulder and pierce burning into his lung. Jack coughs blood, and tears the tactical visor away from his face as his hands shake and his vision narrows and sharpens at the same time. His teeth-- _ so sharp and white _ \--are bared before he realizes it, and he breaks from the cover he'd thrown himself behind to tackle the Talon agent who'd hit him.

He realizes that he's shrieking. He realizes that with a perforated lung he should be gasping his last breaths on the concrete, not moving faster than he had when he was fresh from the SEP. He realizes that he has no idea what's driving him beyond a dark, unfathomable instinct that's risen up from his tired, starved body as he tears through the neck guard the Talon agent is wearing and buries his teeth-- _ fangs _ \--in the man's neck.

Jack moans into the shredded flesh that separated the Talon agent's jugular from Jack's fangs; blood flowing into his mouth in arterial bursts, spattering down his chin as he clumsily tries to seal his lips over the gaping wound. He moans again when the pain of the bullets in his shoulder and lung stops. And again when he starts to feel warmth spreading through his body, his pulse slowly picking up, his thighs flexing and clenching where he's locked them around the Talon agent's legs.

He leaves the dead Talon agent when he hears the juddering heartbeats of the rest of the squad, rising more smoothly than he has in years and shouldering his gun. Jack burns with the night, and he's been  _ starving _ himself.

Before he sets off the explosives that will destroy the Talon outpost he wipes the surveillance systems--stepping over the corpses of the squad meant to garrison the base, each of them with their throats torn out--and makes copies of all the information relevant to his search. Outside, far enough to not have to worry about the explosion, he wipes the blood from around his mouth with his hands; licking it off his fingers.

When he ducks into another anonymous, dingy rest stop bathroom to change out of his bloody, torn jacket and kevlar--this is becoming a theme, he thinks, half-hysterically--Jack sees his face in the mirror. His hair is still white, but if it weren't for the scars he'd think he was twenty again. His eyes are bright and arresting, his cheeks are rosy, it looks like there's something luminous lurking his skin.

His teeth, when he smiles tentatively and disbelievingly into the mirror, are  _ so sharp and white. _


	2. Bloodlust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a vampire with vampire needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly meant for this to be a one-shot but haha this au back at it again with Jack suffering and being a vampire.

Jack has no idea what he’s doing. He’s still  _ hungry _ . 

Seeing his own face again, young and soft and  _ warm _ in a way he hasn’t been in decades, is a greater shock than realizing he’s apparently joined the ranks of the undead.

That’s not surprising. Jack Morrison died with Overwatch, and Gabe, in the Swiss base. He watched the funeral procession given to his empty coffin in a dingy hostel that didn’t look twice at a battered, scarred man who kept to himself and only went out at night. Months later, he’s still amused by the irony; amused-disgusted, because he played his part in killing everything he held dear just as much as Gabe did, and wasn’t that just the problem? 

Being a vampire--and Jack fucking hates the word, the name for his condition; it sounds so ridiculous he can just imagine Gabe laughing--is as much like graduating the SEP program was compared to being a normal soldier. He has special dietary requirements, and wears through his gear faster, and makes bigger messes, and is  _ enhanced _ in ways that he knows he doesn’t understand. He’s pinpointed crashing through the ceiling of the sub-basement lab as the event that caused this, and if he weren’t supposed to be dead he’d track down Angela and ask what the hell was being researched down there. 

It doesn’t really matter though. It won’t unmake what he is.

Once he’s admitted to himself what he is, Jack takes it by trial and error. Hunting Talon is still his goal, and moving at night is still less conspicuous than moving during the day--although he finds he can move during the day, as long as he protects his eyes well enough--it’s more convenient too, because he’s stronger at night. The daylight leaching his strength away and tiring him; the fatigue and irritability creeping up faster and faster the longer he abstains from blood. Which he must do. Jack is a dead man walking, but he’s not a monster yet. He can’t bleed the first person he sees for his own convenience, even when he can hear their pulse and sense the rich vitality of their blood. 

The false youth the blood returned him to begins to fade after a few weeks, Jack’s true age slowly returning. It was useful while it lasted, and Jack gets the sense that starving himself and then glutting himself on blood has disrupted his proper metabolism; if it can be called such a thing. Steady blood would see him in that state of unnatural loveliness forever, and enough blood to kill the wire-tight pangs of  _ hunger _ that wrack him would bring him to some new height he can’t and doesn’t want to imagine. Not now. Not ever, although he can’t promise himself that and he knows it. 

Someday, Jack knows, the blood will win out. He wants it even now, listens to the same dark instincts that drove him to his first taste whisper how sweet it will be: to banish the hunger and take his rightful strength.

To think about his  _ rightful _ anything reminds him of Gabe, shouting furiously as the Swiss base starts to come apart around them, and the thought is enough for now to make up Jack’s mind for him. 

He researches, because it seems practical, and checks the most hindering weaknesses he can think of. Jack still has a reflection. He still appears on surveillance recordings. He still has a shadow, although it’s weaker than it used to be. Fire and decapitation and being staked through the heart are things that would kill a normal person just as well as a vampire, so he doesn’t worry about them. When he spills a handful of bullets while reloading clips for his sidearm, he doesn’t feel a compulsive urge to count them. The list of herbs and plants he’s supposedly developed an aversion to is more trouble than it’s worth.

Silver, though, silver is a problem. Once, a long, long time ago, Gabe had given him a silver pendant of the Virgin Mary--for protection, Gabe had said, one of the few gifts he’d ever given Jack--and Jack digs it out of where he’s kept it, for the memories, mostly, and holds in in the palm of his hand. He looks at her tiny graven face and doesn’t feel like shying away or bursting into flames or howling and clawing his eyes, but he feels the same hot itching working across his skin as he feels when he goes out in the sun. Jack tucks the pendant away again, for the memories, mostly, and finds himself a spare pair of gloves. 

Jack gets a lead on Talon that’s actually worth something, and finds another outpost. This one is better guarded, and larger, and if the pattern holds, will lead him to a more important Talon base. 

Infiltration goes smoothly, and he avoids the perimeter guards and slips in with a discreet leap over the barbed-wire topped fence--even starved and weakened as he is now, ever since he’s tasted blood the nighttime makes him better than his best day in the SEP--making his way to the main building in the shadows of industrial storage tanks and shipping crates. There is one guard between Jack and the easiest entrance to the building he could scout, and the Talon agent isn’t paying attention. Jack means to go in for a silent disarm, a quiet chokehold and drag to avoid raising alarms, but as soon as his arm is around the Talon agent’s neck he feels the  _ hunger _ roar through his veins like a lit match to gunpowder. His mouth gapes and snarls around his fangs, fingers scrabbling for the releases on the tactical visor, his whole world narrowed down to the choking struggles and frantic breaths the Talon agent is making. They speak in the same dark whisper of instinct, and the word Jack hears is  _ prey _ . 

His fingers tear through the neck guard on the Talon agent’s uniform, bearing up his throat to Jack. To Jack’s fangs. To Jack’s  _ hunger _ . Pulse jackrabbiting as the Talon agent struggles for air and escape; adrenaline spiking. Jack can hear it; buries his nose into the Talon agent’s neck and scents at the blood racing under the skin. 

Without thinking he’s pressed the Talon agent into the shadows against the side of the warehouse, arms keeping the Talon agent trapped close to Jack’s body as Jack’s legs wrap around the Talon agent’s hips of their own accord. Jack’s weight bearing the Talon agent to the ground as Jack sinks his fangs into the sweet hammering of his pulse and  _ tears _ until blood is pouring into his mouth; so hot and sharp Jack moans just like the first time. He nuzzles his bloody mouth into the Talon agent’s throat until the Talon agent’s heart starts to stutter and miss beats; finally releasing the hard set of his fangs into flesh as the blood grows sluggish. 

He rises slowly, untangling himself from the death grip he’d held on the Talon agent’s body with his own. He doesn’t bother to wipe the blood from his mouth; the night is stretched out around him like a soft veil has been torn away from the world, and he can sense the heartbeats of every Talon agent nearby. 

Jack had forgotten how  _ clear _ everything was after he’d fed the last time. 

He stumbles slightly, almost drunk on it, as he finds the tactical visor and hooks it to his belt. He follows his course of infiltration just as he’d planned, stopping for a moment at the corpse of the Talon agent he’d drained to grasp them by the shoulder and chin and hide the incriminating wound over the jugular by tearing the agent’s head off. Easily. 

Once he’s inside he stalks, the predatory instinct he’d managed to suppress around innocents and civilians riding hard on Jack now that he’s identified acceptable prey. There is another inattentive Talon agent near his ingress point, and Jack fluidly pulls them into the shadows before wrapping himself around them and tearing into their throat before they can make a sound. Their struggles only encouraging Jack to work his fangs in deeper; to tighten his arms around their shoulders and his thighs around around their waist. Almost like a lover’s embrace, as the Talon agent managed to support his weight on their stunned legs for a few moments before slowly crumpling to the ground. Jack is warm again, his pulse beating a sluggish normal, by the time he extricates himself. Taking the same measure to avoid discovery as he did with the first agent, before pulling himself up into the rafters and slinking towards his next prey. 

This agent is attentive enough to see him, but their eyes catch on Jack’s and they freeze--like a mouse sighting a snake--as Jack stares, intent on blood and nothing else, and for a moment the Talon agent’s trembling hand reaches towards their neck guard before Jack is upon them. Legs locking around their waist as his arms bracket their shoulders, one hand tearing away the neck guard while the other slides through their hair and pulls their throat onto display for him. He strikes, fangs tearing in and shredding flesh, and moans greedily when the blood starts to flow; vice grip on the agent’s body tightening until they’re flush against each other, and distantly, behind the rush of blood that consumes his thoughts, Jack almost thinks he can feel their warmth spreading into his body as it leaves them. 

He works through the base like this. Leaving drained and beheaded victims in his wake. When he finds the information he needs he copies it, methodically, and wipes the security feeds before rigging up his explosives. 

Jack slips through the shadows back to his safe-house like a wraith. There is no notice of his passing, not even a gust of breeze or a shadow falling crooked to mark his presence. He feels unbearably warm. He feels radiant with blood; hot and red in his veins, stolen from Talon who helped steal his life from him. He starts to strip out of his bloodspattered fatigues and kevlar and jacket as soon as he’s secured the door, and barely makes it to the tiny shower stall before he’s turning on the spray as hot as it will go and desperately swiping his hands over his mouth to catch the last of the blood on his fingers and lick them clean. His hands sliding down his body to his achingly hard cock as soon as they’re spit-clean, wrapping around it as he goes to his knees under the shower spray. He comes almost as soon as he touches himself, wound tight and burning from the thrill of the hunt; his stolen warmth echoing each time he’d clutched a Talon agent into his bone-crushing parody of a lover’s embrace and drained out their vitality. 

The high leaves him as the pleasure of orgasm slips away, leaving Jack huddled under the spray as it begins to go cold. He feels revulsion, suddenly, but the thought of being sick--of losing all that precious blood--seems as wrong as the joy his kills had brought. 

When he finally staggers to his feet and catches sight of himself in the mirror, he’s perfect again. His scars are gentle, faded lines across his face. His eyes are dark and gleaming. His mouth a red and perfect bow. 

He shivers for a moment, but straightens his spine, and rolls his shoulders back, and finds something to wear while he scrubs blood off his kevlar and thinks of names of suppliers who can replace his jacket; in a color that won’t show bloodstains as easily.

Jack Morrison died with Overwatch, but the dreadful wight that wears his youthful face is still a soldier. He is fighting a war, and all wars must have their acceptable casualties. 

When his gear is as clean as he’s going to get it, he knocks out the mouth guard on his tactical visor, and starts combing through the information he pried from Talon’s bloodless grasp. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Jack's 'feeding' hold, think of the animation for female player characters from Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines. Which is a great game, 10/10 highly recommend if you like vampires.
> 
> Jack's vampire strengths and weaknesses were picked at random, but his general 'flavor' of vampire was inspired again by V:tMB.


	3. Sharp Hot Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaper is hired by a desperate Talon to hunt a ghost. What he finds is something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank everyone who commented bc it's you guys that prodded my bunnies into staying active on this au. 
> 
> Also, because I can't resist more VtM references, even if they're meta (although this can all be ignored, since VtM kindred can't do sunlight and I already broke that rule...oops...): Jack is technically caitiff, bc he has no idea what he's doing. How and why Overwatch had vampire vitae is a mystery, but I'm actually imagining the clan as Ventrue (antitribu, probably), and when Jack crashed through the lab it was enough to sire him; so he's of a respectable enough generation although he has, again, no idea. Being unattached, Jack doesn't have a very strong version of the clan weakness (his variant running along the line of 'can only drink from acceptable targets', which his morals enforce on him anyways) and is running what amounts to Fortitude/Potence/Dominate/Auspex in terms of disciplines

Reaper contracts to Talon out of convenience more than anything else. They don’t ask questions, their jobs are straightforward, and they don’t fuss about collateral damage as long as the targets are captured or eliminated. They have enough influence to get most of the busywork of locating and confirming targets done before calling him in, too, which is more than enough to make Reaper happy. 

There are some jobs when that’s not the case, and those jobs are usually the most challenging. Looking at the slender dossier that Widowmaker holds, it seems that this will be another of those times. 

There is a thorn in Talon’s side, it seems, that has been pricking at them for years. The file is unhelpfully short, and has no exact details on when the problem started--just a list of all the confirmed incidents, as well as some guesses from data analysts who think they’ve stumbled upon previously-unrelated incidents that might fit the pattern. As far as Reaper--and he’s not really Reaper when he’s reading through files and drawing on his experience from  _ before _ , no, that’s all  _ Gabriel _ \--can see. As far as Gabriel can see, the chain of incidents starts with outposts raids. One-night ops digging for info; someone, somewhere, very determinedly digging into whatever parts of Talon they can expose. 

The only remarkable thing Gabriel can see at first is that no alarms got raised during the break-ins, and that between the estimated time of entry and the bases being blown sky-high, none of the agents seem to have been able to do a thing to stop it. The explosions erase most of the evidence they might have collected, but the note on one of the earliest connected incidents that all the heads of the agents caught in the blast--perimeter guard left completely untouched and unaware until the base had gone up--had been cleanly removed, by some force other than the explosion, is enough to cast an uncomfortable pall over an already disturbing report. 

Whoever’s behind it only gets bolder as time goes on, bouncing from Talon outpost to Talon outpost around the world, before finally catching a lead that connects Talon to one of their many secretly-sponsored collaborators. Mostly gangs looking for cheaper, better weapons, who don’t might providing local muscle and contacts in exchange for Talon’s considerable largesse. 

Based on the reports, Gabriel would say it was a team working on taking down Talon, but based on the reports, there’s no evidence of the kind of logistics and transport a team of that size--and Gabriel can just about guess, considering how many people he’d need to accomplish it--would need to get in and out. There’s no evidence of logistics and transport or anything out of the ordinary at all. Just a blank space of a few hours stretching out into carnage and disrupted operations and stolen information. 

There’s a few pictures clipped to the reports; glossy eight by tens showing a warehouse strewn with corpses, or a smashed up laboratory, or shredded wall safe. Gabriel stopping at the last one for a moment, slowly making sense of the rends and tears in the solid steel door; torn off its hinges with no apparent method but brute force. There are interviews with surviving agents: mostly security who saw and heard nothing; laboratory staff who’d stepped out for breaks and returned to find their colleagues dismembered; and a few very special interviews that Gabriel can tell were included for thoroughness’ sake and nothing else. That they’re possibly the most illuminating thing in the file so far isn’t lost on him, even as he reads through the transcripts of distressed and terrified agents insisting that they were minding their own business--usually public administration or security, in Talon’s locations that shared buildings with civilians, because an office tower is an office tower is an office tower--when they suddenly found themselves opening doors or surrendering restricted IDs or keycards or security codes and then passing out. They don’t remember who they were assisting, or why. The only thing they can recall--all of them, consistently--is being motivated by something not of their own volition, as though a will greater than their own had been imposed upon them. Some of them--and Gabriel notes that they’re generally the more independent and self-assured agents--have vague memories of a single dark figure; unable to provide a name or a face, just an impression of sleek, predatory motion and the gleam of shadowed eyes. 

Other than that, there are three things left in the file. The first is a last known location for their mysterious perpetrator. The second and third are two grainy, blown-up images obviously scrounged from outside CCTV and security cameras; the images are dated several years apart, showing a man in heavy combat fatigues and obvious tac gear. 

In the first image the man wears a modified tactical visor--covering only his eyes rather than his entire face, and shoulders what Gabriel identifies as a pulse rifle; he’s ducking around a corner as the camera manages to catch a fleeting glimpse of him. The second image is much the same, a fleeting glimpse of what could be the same man in motion; there are differences, though, the man now wearing a voluminous hood--and the similarity to Reaper’s own is enough that Gabriel can tell that it would be deeper than his own hood, falling forward to cover the man’s forehead and cast his face in deep shadow--and having altered his gear load somehow. The picture too grainy to see the differences other than the lack of pulse rifle.

All in all, the file is aggravatingly spare of information. A mystery that no analyst or consultant has been able to crack, and no investigation has made any progress with. Widowmaker had tried, sitting in a sniper’s nest for days and seeing nothing, finally managing to guess which base their mysterious assailant was headed to but having him slip through her grasp. She’s as annoyed as Gabriel is at being handed this file and asked to do this job. 

Reaper is faster than she is, though, and doesn’t have to worry about things like doors and walls and dismemberment. He’s also the exact last person Talon has brought in because of his notorious impatience. But now it falls to him to unravel this mess and prevent any more losses. So he flips through the file again, and demands copies of every bit of information they can give him that was stolen in the latest attack, and sets to work.

Based on the pattern, there are two possible targets ‘Designation 76’--as the Talon code for their assailant has developed into--could decide to follow up. These targets happen to be on opposite sides of the world, however, so Gabriel picks the more likely of the two to stake out and arranges--although ‘advises’ would be a more accurate word--for a trap to be laid at the other. 

For a problem they’ve been having for years, Talon is strangely unenthusiastic about Reaper’s involvement bringing an end to this. Gabriel can guess that they’ve tried traps before. Gabriel can guess that they’ve wanted to interrogate and dissect ‘Designation 76’ for as long as they’ve known about him. What Gabriel wants to know, now--and what he focuses on to bind the biting impatience and aggression that Reaper breathes like smoke--is who ‘Designation 76’ actually is, and how they’ve managed a one-man war on Talon for so long.

His stakeout lasts for weeks. He can’t overtly visit the Talon offices he’s watching, nor can Talon mobilize more security or remove their agents--although they’re doubtlessly working their in-house tech people into overtime attempting to wipe, re-route, or dead-end all of the on-site data--without tipping their hand to whatever surveillance 76 might be running before he strikes. Reaper’s watch finally pays off, however, late one night when he spots a quickly moving figure on the fire escape of the office complex. By the time Reaper’s confirmed the figure isn’t a security guard or agent responding to an emergency in the building, the man has burst through one of the fire escape doors and disappeared into the building.

Reaper follows, misting down from his perch and shadow-stepping up the fire escape and through the caved-in door. It is late enough that all but security personnel have left the building, and Reaper doesn’t see anyone until he he gets to the security checkpoint separating Talon’s anonymous offices from the rest of the building. The guard is slumped unconscious across the desk; there’s no sign of forced entry and the alarms and security feeds have all been deactivated with the appropriate security codes. Talon’s insistence that ‘Designation 76’ be captured rather than killed was clearly an interest in whatever ability allowed him to hypnotize agents into doing his bidding. He tears open the heavy access door at the security checkpoint. Inside the door is the slumped corpse of another security guard. The floor and the back of the door are both spattered with blood, there are bullet casings on the floor, the guard’s gun is still warm from being fired and the reek of cordite still hangs in the air. The guard’s throat has been torn out. ‘Designation 76’, who should be heavily injured from the number of bullets the guard managed to fire, is nowhere to be seen, and just past the guard’s body the bloody boot-prints in the carpet stop. 

Reaper slips into wraith form to move as quickly and silently as he can, gliding down the hallway in the direction he knows the main servers are kept. There’s a soft shifting like a boot sole sliding across the carpeting, and Reaper throws himself to the side just as shots from a pulse rifle pierce through the space his head would have been. He dissipates into mist and then neatly reforms, already drawing his shotguns, facing ‘Designation 76’ as he does so. 

The man is as tall as he is, broad and well-built, wearing dark fatigues and a dark jacket over kevlar; the same hood Reaper had seen before slipping down to cast his face into shadow, only the gleam of his eyes visible. There are bullet holes in his jacket and fatigues, neat round punches of puckered out leather and fabric. The kevlar accounts for some of them, but not all of them; not the ones Reaper can see along 76’s legs and arms. Before Reaper has finished rematerializing, he’s firing at 76. At this range, if the man were normal, there’d be no way for him to move out of the blasts in time.

76 swiftly proves to be far more than normal, dodging the shotgun blasts and firing back at Reaper. He springs down the hallway, closing the distance between himself and Reaper, firing as he went before forcing Reaper into hand-to-hand combat. Reaper phases and drops his shotguns--so easily replaced he doesn’t even think about the shells he’s throwing away unfired--meeting 76’s blows with dodges and blocks of his own and wraithing away to reposition their fight in a place where he has more of an advantage than the hallway they’re cornered in. It’s almost comical to be in a fight to the death in a cheery office; Reaper isn’t pulling his punches at all, and it’s clear that 76 intends to complete their mission even if he has to tear through Reaper to do it--as he’s torn through countless Talon agents. Under the florescent lights, Reaper catches small glimpses of 76’s face as the cloth of his deep hood shifts.

His chin is slick with blood, dripping down his throat and soaking into the neck of his kevlar. Reaper thinks, momentarily, of the guard he’d found with their throat torn out, and puts the pieces together quickly enough. 76 is clearly enhanced in some way, and Reaper hasn’t had to exert himself in a fight like this since--the thought cuts off, forcefully, and for a moment he’s Gabriel, reminding himself that he can’t think of that right now. 76 gets in a few solid, battering hits--Reaper having to half dematerialize to absorb the force behind them--before Reaper sees an opening and kicks 76 hard in the face, snapping his head back, the momentum carrying him back to smash into the wall. For a moment they’re both still, the fight pausing as they both regain their equilibrium; both of them far too well-matched for comfort, the familiarity of it jarring and discomfiting. 

76 shifts forward, his hood slipping back just enough to reveal his face, and Gabriel freezes. 

“ _ Jack _ ” he whispers hoarsely. 

Gabriel almost can’t believe it, because it can’t be possible, but it’s Jack’s face under 76’s hood. Not Jack’s face as it was when they last saw each other, but Jack’s face when they were young and in love with the world and each other; when things were perfect and they’d planned to be side-by-side forever. Then he takes a breath, and blinks, and suddenly this Jack snaps into focus before him.

He sees the blood coating Jack’s mouth and chin again, the slender lines of scars that match damningly well with the gaping wounds that were on his face the last time Gabriel saw him in the ruins of the Swiss base. Jack’s eyes are like shards of obsidian; catching and reflecting light in sharp and dazzling fractals. Gleaming like a knife-edge; aware of exactly how much damage they can do, and it’s that more than anything that shudders through Gabriel like a black wave. Making him aware that something is  _ wrong _ even before he watches Jack’s mouth--as full and sweet as it was decades ago--curl back to bare  _ fangs _ . 

“Who the hell are you?” the phantom Jack asks, and it’s too much.

Gabriel tears his mask off and flings it aside. He can feel the black smoke wisping from his mouth, and knows the red glow of his own eyes. As soon as his white owl’s face has been thrown, he draws his shotguns and readies himself to finish the fight. In the moment between his mask dropping, and his guns being drawn, Gabriel can see Jack’s eyes widen; can see Jack’s inhuman snarl smooth away into surprise--and Gabriel  _ knows _ this is Jack, down to his soul.

“ _ Gabriel _ ” Jack whispers, half-choked and rasping with emotion, before he dives past Gabriel and throws himself through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the wall of the office lobby. 

By the time Gabriel turns and shadow-steps to the window there’s no sign of Jack. No evidence he’d been there at all except the broken glass and dead guard. 

Gabriel finds his mask and slides it back over his face, he checks again that no security footage has been recorded to document their confrontation. 

Jack is alive. Jack is  _ changed _ somehow, like he was. Jack is the terror behind Talon’s hundreds-long casualties list. 

Reaper holsters his shotguns, and slips away into the night as well. He and Jack still have unfinished business.

He tries not to think about Jack’s black-ice eyes and blood-slicked mouth. He fails. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gabe is just an itty bit disassociative when it comes to himself and 'Reaper'. 
> 
> Jack needs eye contact to use his Dominate (vampiric mind control) discipline abilities, and Auspex makes up for the lack of tactical visor.
> 
> Also the media hasn't come up with 'Soldier: 76' because Jack's been staying as far from any attention as possible. I'm aware the timeskip is a bit of a cop-out but couldn't think of a better way to introduce Gabe.


	4. A Handsome Stranger Called Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel had almost forgotten that Jack's survival instincts went to shit when he didn't have a team to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay. we did it kids! the (hopeful) conclusion of the ballad of wispy gabe and vampire jack!
> 
> (aka: the sex finally happens)

After their fight at the office complex--although when Gabriel thought of it his mind supplied the word  _ reunion _ , as though that was any better, after years of thinking he’d killed Jack in Switzerland--Reaper hadn’t reported back to Talon on the job with anything more than a perfunctory message that 76 had escaped, and a demand for Talon to provide resources while he hunted 76 personally. 

For a time, Gabriel had thought Jack might go after the second target the information from his last raid on Talon had gotten him, but he knew better, at heart. Jack might have changed, but he was still cautious. A conservative field commander who wouldn’t take risks with the lives of his team if he couldn’t avoid it; who’d rather retreat and look for another way than play out a risky maneuver that would pay off gloriously if it worked. That was what had made them work best together, after all: Jack made sure no one was sticking their neck out, and Gabriel figured out exactly the right odds to play, each mission combining their strengths to spectacular results. 

Gabriel forgets, however, that once Jack is freed of responsibility for a team, his concerns for safety drop considerably. He’s reminded of this fact when he finally tracks Jack down again; the other man moving quickly enough that he doesn’t entirely cover his trail at first, and once Gabriel’s figured out which direction Jack’s going it doesn’t matter when he slows down again and starts painstakingly covering his tracks. 

Jack finally stops running in some nameless town just close enough to a major city to have a gang problem bigger than its tiny sheriff's station could handle. Gabriel arrives soon after, and can guess at Jack’s destination easily enough. The local gang operates out of a dingy warehouse at the town’s largely abandoned industrial railway station; they’re not connected to Talon, from the information Reaper has available to him, but they’re in casual negotiations. Talon reaching out to any gang presence large enough to settle into a town, and more than interested in groups that controlled some form of infrastructure or transit.

The warehouse is covered in brightly-painted graffiti and gang signs, the colors at odds with the depressed surroundings and dirty lot. Gabriel can hear gunfire, and Reaper shadow-steps to the door; rematerializing just in time to take a round of buckshot to the chest as a panicked gang member tries to hold the door while shooting at anything that moved. Reaper growls low in his chest, already feeling the regeneration burn his energy reserves, and draws his own shotguns. He blasts the gang member with the shotgun out of the doorway in a bloody mist, and wraiths through the door to find a good vantage point and determine what the hell is going on. 

There are catwalks still hanging precariously from the ceiling, the remains of upper-level offices linking them and the heavy beams that make up the rafters, and Reaper moves from one to another, tracking the progress of a firefight gone bad. Jack’s personal brand of recklessness come back to slap him in the face, and Gabriel feels a bone-deep rage for a moment--the kind that usually only belongs to Reaper--that this stupid bastard is going to get himself killed before Gabriel can kill him. The absurdity of the thought is enough to kill his anger as soon as it breaks over him, and he follows the trail of strewn bodies to the room where the fight is still in progress. 

Jack is pinned down behind a teetering wall of heavy packing crates; shot-up and still bleeding, whatever healing ability he has being overcome by the sheer amount of damage he’s taken. Somehow these idiots had gotten ahold of a turret, and Gabriel could figure out exactly the kind of snakes’ nest Jack had walked into; a supposedly easy cleanup of a bunch of untrained, undisciplined thugs turning into a sustained firefight against a nervy but well-armed group. 

Gabriel curses himself a minute later when one of the gang actually bothers looking up, and spots him, redirecting fire enough for Jack to get in a few shots with his pulse rifle, but not being able to dissipate into smoke before sub-machine gun fire tears through his calves. It burns as he drops into smoke and reappears falling into their midst, aiming for the turret first, even as he catches more gunfire on the descent. His regeneration doesn’t slow, even as he feels the continued drain of energy, and he blasts the turret into pieces. 

Jack has picked off most of the gang by the time the turret goes down; the lack of discipline dividing their fire so they could neither stop Gabriel nor keep Jack pinned. Gabriel stumbles as he avoids the frantic shots of the last few gang members, smashing one face-first into the packing crates and shooting another in the chest. He turns, raising a shotgun to finish off the last gang member, only to find Jack clinging to them; face buried in their throat. 

Gabriel is frozen for a moment, staring at the tableau spread out before him: Jack’s arms clinging to the fallen gang member’s shoulders, his thighs bracketing their waist, his hood fallen back to expose the too-pale line of Jack’s throat as it works. The  _ noises _ Jack is making--and Gabriel  _ remembers _ those noises--are sweet little breaths of pleasure, sighs easing into quiet moans as Jack drinks down some poor fool’s lifeblood. The sight of Jack when he lifts his head; mouth a perfect cupid’s bow of red, dripping down his chin, dark eyes blending with dark pupils blown wide, is mesmerizing enough that Gabriel keeps staring even when Jack stands fluidly and steps toward the last living gang member who lies dazed at Gabriel’s feet.

“What is it for you?” Jack asks, out of the blue, and Gabriel is so distracted he can only reply.

“What?”

“You got hit,” Jack says, “What is it you burn up when you heal?”

“Souls,” Gabriel says, softly, because while he’s never denied himself what he needs to heal, he can’t think of the concept of the soul without remembering the clacking of his abuela's rosary beads.

Jack smirks a little bit, the way Gabriel knows mean’s he’s punch-drunk and adrenaline-high, “ _ Souls _ ,” Jack echoes, “how fancy, it’s just blood for me.”

Gabriel wants to slap Jack a little bit, wants to reach out and fucking throttle him when Jack brushes past to haul the dazed gang member away from the packing crates and over to a clearer part of the floor.

“Do you think we can share?” Jack asks, smiling that damned country boy smile up at Gabriel from where he’s kneeling, holding the gang member down with one hand when they start to struggle. Gabriel stares as Jack shreds the collar of their shirt, hauling them up into his arms and tilting their neck back--finding the perfect place to bite, Gabriel realizes--before giving Gabriel another questioning look.

He drops to his knees on the other side of the gang member just as Jack bares his teeth and tears into their jugular. The gang member thrashes in Jack’s embrace, but it does nothing to drown out the pure, sweet noise of pleasure Jack makes when the blood begins to flow. 

Gabriel pries his mask off, letting black soul-smoke wisp from his mouth and gently haze around the dying gang member; he can sense Jack’s drain on their vitality, the slow leach of their life-force. And, as it slips away, their soul beginning to pull free of their body. He leans in, smoke pouring from his mouth and into the dying gang member’s mouth and nose. Gabriel senses more than sees Jack pulling back as their pulse starts to get thready and uneven, and Gabriel breathes out and then  _ breathes in _ , soul pulling free and carrying on his smoke back into his mouth, tendrils of mist carrying it down his throat as Gabriel already begins to feel his energy renew itself. 

Jack is staring at him when he comes back to himself, dark eyes wide, mouth poised delicately, as if he were about to speak; he looks so fucking beautiful that Gabriel winds a hand through his white hair and kisses him. The disturbing satisfaction of hearing Jack make the same sound when their lips meet as when Jack tastes blood isn’t lost on Gabriel, but he can’t bring himself to particularly care. Jack drops the gang member’s body to wind his arms around Gabriel’s shoulders, pulling him closer and deepening the kiss eagerly. Gabriel drops an arm around Jack’s waist and pulls them flush against each other, and then shadow-steps them into a roll that takes them to one of the few patches of concrete floor not covered in dead bodies. Jack is shuddering against him when they land, Gabriel’s thigh finding it’s way between Jack’s legs as though their last time together was only days ago and not decades. They’re still kissing, slowly and greedily, Gabriel learning Jack’s fangs the same as Jack gasps around the wisps of smoke that Gabriel unconsciously breathes down his throat. As slow and greedy as Jack rolls his hips to grind against Gabriel before Gabriel crushes them together, taking a grip on Jack’s thigh where it tucks over Gabriel’s hip and shifting until they fit together flush and perfect. 

Neither of them bothers to try working through the tac harnesses and ammo belts and buttons and zippers; Jack spreads his thighs in the most inviting way Gabriel’s ever seen, and they grind their cocks together regardless of their clothes. Jack turns their kisses biting without realizing it, fangs sinking into Gabriel’s bottom lip to draw blood, but Gabriel minds as little as Jack minds breathing in the smoke wafting from Gabriel’s body. 

They tip over the edge of orgasm together, Jack’s legs tightening where they’re tangled with Gabriel’s while Gabriel kisses him as though he could eat Jack’s greedy-needy-desperate moans out of his mouth. Gabriel lets his forehead rest against Jack’s for a moment, before dematerializing and rematerializing upright. Jack’s sated sprawl on the concrete is sinful even before his tongue darts out to lick Gabriel’s blood from his mouth, grinning like sunshine up at Gabriel when he offers Jack a hand. Jack takes it, but rolls to his feet so bonelessly it's obvious he didn’t need it. 

Jack has that look on his face like he’s too blissed to care about much of anything, but his eyes are night-dark and blade-sharp. 

“You and I,” Jack says, voice the fucked-out drawl that Gabriel could never quite resist, “have some unfinished business.”

There’s enough steel in Jack’s tone, riding sleekly along with the sex and the blood--and for a moment Gabriel wishes he could have been there when Jack figured out how to he a predator, no matter how awkward and painful it must have been--that Gabriel knows the question is not if he and Jack will be meeting again, but when. 

“We’ll finish this,” Gabriel says roughly, “next time,” he tips Jack’s head back and kisses him again, before drawing away, “Until then, remember that no one but me is going to kill you.”

Jack fucking laughs at him, quirking his eyebrows as he shoulders his pulse rifle and threads his way out of the warehouse.

“We’ll see, Gabe, we’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title and quotation from 'Bloodflood' by Alt-J.
> 
> Honestly though 76 is a wreck of a man, once he gets over the shock he's so into this whole vampire thing. I couldn't fit reaper in but just imagine him finding jack tearing the throats out of a Talon squad and being confused but aroused.
> 
> Is my Hellsing trash showing too much?
> 
> ha ha I love this au. K ill me.


End file.
